In Postwar Italy, Artists Revolutionized Culture
Today post-1945 Italy is often presented as an age of anti-fascist hegemony. But Cold War Italy was no paradise for the Left — and neorealist filmmakers and writers had to resist Church censorship and right-wing hegemony over the country’s culture.
Film director Federico Fellini with actor Marcello Mastroianni in Rome, Italy, 1962. (Archivio Cicconi / Getty Images)
William Weaver, a former ambulance driver in southern Italy for the US Army, moved to Rome in 1945 at age twenty-five. As an aspiring writer, and supporter of the partisans, Weaver soon became a famous friend and colleague to numerous Italian filmmakers and writers.
He had impeccable timing. Weaver began his life’s work just as neorealism was being invented and showcased in Italy and abroad. Rome, Open City, director Roberto Rossellini’s first important neorealist film, became an instant cult hit at a small Times Square movie house in New York. It was soon followed by Rossellini’s Paisan, Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves, and Giuseppe De Santis’s Bitter Rice.
Together they became recognized hits in Italy, Europe, and a few cities in the United States. But despite the huge accolades for this breakthrough style of filmmaking, only 11 percent of Italian films made between 1945 and 1953 were neorealist — and of these, many were box office failures.
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